Warren wants a cop on the beat

By Rap Lewis

Elizabeth Warren is working to make sure that the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau actually functions to protect consumers. Inevitably, she is earning the fear and loathing of Wall Street interests and their kin, including Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. Warren needs and deserves our support.

A janitor’s daughter turned Harvard law professor and bankruptcy expert, Warren was charged by President Obama with setting up the new bureau, a task to which she is devoting her impressive talents. Creation of the bureau was her idea in the first place.

Warren is vice president of the American Law Institute and is on the executive committee of the National Bankruptcy Conference. She directed the National Bankruptcy Review Commission’s study of federal bankruptcy laws and drafted its report to Congress.

In October of 2008, Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader, named Warren to direct Congressional oversight of the bank bailout.

“She interpreted her mandate aggressively,” wrote Stephen Crowley in the New York Times. She launched independent research projects and grilled Treasury Department officials with courteous but pointed questions about their treatment of banks.

Banking lobbyists were unhappy. They scowl at the idea of a consumer protection agency, and they fear Elizabeth Warren even more.

“We need a cop on the beat that American families can count on,” Warren told the House Financial Services Committee. “It is critical that we get this right – a real cop on the beat. If there had been a cop on the beat with the authority to hold mortgage servicers accountable a half-dozen years ago, the problems in mortgage servicing would have been exposed long before they became a national scandal.”

Warren wants to arm the new bureau with strong enforcement powers to protect consumers from the fine-print credit card thievery and mortgage chicanery that are standard operating procedure for the big banks.

One big problem is that her appointment is temporary. The President will need to formally nominate her, and to support her through the Senate confirmation process.

To deal with credit card shysters and greedy bankers, Warren wants a cop on the beat. A burly cop. With a stout nightstick. She should have our strong support.